Journey of Eve
by Alyx Bradford
Summary: *Chapter Two -- Adam's choice* Rewrite of the Genesis story. Focuses primarily on Eve and her experiences. PG-13 for mature themes.
1. And the woman did eat

[Authoress's Notes:

[I have always wondered what Eve made of Genesis.  This is simply my interpretation of events, my guess at what might have been going through the Great Mother's mind.  It ought to be noted that I don't even buy the whole creation story as anything but a very nice and inventive piece of fiction.  To anyone who does believe the story as it is set down in the Bible, you have my apologies because you will no doubt find this offensive.  This is my version of events.

[This was all heavily influenced by the excellent musical "Children of Eden"]

Journey of Eve

_"And the woman did eat_

_And her eyes were opened_

_Through her tears, she saw the beauty all around her"_

_~~Children of Eden_

~~*~~

On a warm summer day – all days there were warm summer days – a woman standing next to a tree cradled a half-eaten fruit in her hand.  She was very tall and very beautiful, with properly proportioned curves, healthy limbs, and a mane of chestnut brown hair that curled and spiraled around her body, tickling the tips of her breasts and pooling around her hips.  Her skin was a luscious golden brown, and her eyes were the same perfect green as the grass in which she wriggled her toes.  Those eyes were even now pooling with water, an experience which she did not understand but found marvelous all the same.  Gazing around at her surroundings, she did not seem to notice that sticky juice from the fruit had dripped down her hand, sliding into the crevices between her fingers and trickling down her wrist.  She was far too interested in the world around her, which seemed suddenly brighter and more colorful, to take notice of anything so near herself.

Her name was Eve.  She had a story that began before this point, but it did not matter.  Nothing before this moment mattered; it was all dark, all an illusion.  She had spent her entire life – and she knew now precisely how many years that had been – in ignorance.  Eve had seen every inch of the garden she shared with Adam, had explored every grove, rock, and bush.  She had appreciated it all as a gift from her Father, but never before had she realized how beautiful it was.  The world before had been taken entirely for granted, but now she saw the sweet intricacies of everything, the delicacy in the wings of a butterfly and the stability in the wood of the oak.  Her eyes welled with tears, which appeared unbidden as she tried to sort out the flood of comprehension that had swept into her brain.

_I have a brain…_ she thought.  It seemed odd to her now that the thought had never occurred to her before.  It was this jarring realization that shook her out of her stupor.  _I have a body…_ Eve noticed, glancing down at herself.  _And it is entirely naked…_  Naked.  She had never thought that word before, but now intrinsically understood the meaning.  _It is a nice body… I should thank Father for making it so nice…_

Eve looked at the fruit in her hand, and then up at the angel who had plucked it from the tree for her.  He was a tall man with fae-like features: very pale skin, very dark hair which he had tied at the nape of his neck with a white ribbon, and a structure that made it seem as though his bones were made more like a bird's than a human's.  Several things occurred to Eve in very rapid succession.  First, that he was not mortal and therefore likely had no bones at all; second, that if he did have bones they were not likely to be as dense as a human's; third, that she suddenly knew there was a difference between her bones and the bones of the cardinal twittering a few trees away; and fourth, that she had made the comparison before realizing she knew the difference.

"That's going to be happening a lot," the angel drawled.  He had not told Eve his name, even though she had asked.  He had said it did not matter.

"You… you know?" she said tremulously.

"Of course, my dear," he said, lazily brushing pollen off the shoulder of his well-cut black suit.  _Adam would look wonderful in clothes like that…_ Eve thought aimlessly.  "Of course I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking that you'll never be able to process what you know, that the ideas and realizations will keep swarming your pretty little head until you go mad."  Eve nodded dumbly.  "Don't worry.  That will fade with time.  But for the near future, yes, it will happen a lot.  I sincerely doubt you'll go mad.  You seem a capable sort."

She blinked at him.  "Your name is Lucifer," she said softly, after a moment.  He raised one dark eyebrow delicately.  "Angel of Light."

"Yes… that's one of my names.  You're cleverer than I thought," he said, a pleased smirk crossing his fine features.  "I was betting it would take you at least a day to figure that out."

"I haven't figured out yet… why?"  
"Why?"

"Why give me the fruit?"

He smiled again.  "You deserved to know.  Your Father's being an utter prat, trying to keep you and your lover in complete ignorance forever.  It's an insult to you both."

"He's going to be furious…"

"You knew that before you ate it."

Lucifer was right.  She had not known much before accepting Lucifer's gift, but she had been fully aware that her Father did not want her to take it.  "But Mother will understand…"

Lucifer nodded slowly.  "Yes.  Your Mother will understand."

_But what will She be able to do?_ Eve wondered.  The thrill of revelation had clouded Eve's reasoning process, but it was clearing now.  She had not really given consideration to the consequences of her actions.  What was Father going to do?  _And does it matter?_  She regretted this rebellious thought almost immediately, banishing it from her mind.

But it crept back.  _Honestly,_ she asked herself.  _Does it matter now?  I could… I could leave… I know now… I could leave this place, see the transient beauty of what lies beyond…_

"Yes," Lucifer said.  "You could."  
"That's very unnerving, you know," Eve said, impudently chastising the angel.  He did not, however, seem insulted.  His pale blue eyes actually sparkled with pleasure.

"I apologize," he said politely, though Eve was not certain whether or not he meant it.  "I don't mean to frighten you.  I'm used to living with those who communicate primarily through telepathy."

"Angels don't use their voices?"

"Not often," he replied with a shrug.

"Whyever not?"  Eve was getting to like her own voice rather a lot.  She had not before noticed its musical qualities, its ability to traipse up and down scales, changing pitch and intonation.  Eve's was a clear alto, full and strong and infused with the power and vigor of her person.  "Voices are… lovely.  Why don't they use them?"

"I've never understood," Lucifer confessed.  His own was a sliding tenor, with a very cultured quality to it.  "There are a lot of things I've never understood about the other angels."

Eve met Lucifer's eyes for a moment, and a strange but comfortable moment of camaraderie passed between them.  She then looked down at the fruit.  "Adam… may not understand…"

"He may not," Lucifer admitted.

"Whatever I do… wherever I go from here… it may be without… without him."  She said all of this very slowly, as it was occurring to her for the first time, and she did not entirely want to believe it.  In everything that had gone through her mind since eating the fruit, she had somehow not managed to conceive a world without Adam.  "It will not… be easy…"

"Few things are, pet," Lucifer said, with only a slight consoling note in his voice.  "Your life until now has been easy because you knew nothing.  With knowledge comes power… and responsibility.  And choices."

"Adam may not make the same choice as me."

"True.  He may not."  The coolness left Lucifer's voice as he continued.  "But… I think he will."

"What makes you say that?"  Eve was still crying, though only half-aware of it.  She had never cried before, because she had never needed to.

"Because the poor sod loves you," the angel said simply.

"He… loves me…"  Eve's perfect face screwed up in confusion.  She knew that, of course, had always known _that_.  She loved Adam and he loved her.  Nothing in the world was more simple.  Had been more simple.  Suddenly her chest felt tight, her stomach uneasy.  Muscles she only just realized existed tightened, and she could feel her heart racing.  Love wasn't simple anymore

Lucifer laughed.  "The fruit won't help you understand that, dear.  Emotions are more complicated, more mysterious than knowledge."  He stepped forward and tipped her chin up.  "And more beautiful.  It's what makes you humans so wonderful."

Eve blinked, sending streams of water down her smooth cheeks.  "It's starting to hurt… the knowledge… the burden…"

"I warned you it would."

"I know…"

"Would you go back?"

Eve regarded him for a moment, then stepped away and looked at the garden.  Her eyes darted to the wall of trees far in the distance, not quite as thick and forbidding as before.  "No…" she said softly.  Then, with more conviction, "No, I would not go back.  And I will not stay where I am… I… I need to go see Adam."

Lucifer reached up and with his long fingers plucked another fruit from the tree.  "Finish yours on the way, and give him this."

Eve took the second fruit from the angel.  "Thank you," she said, with guileless honesty.

Lucifer waved a hand dismissingly.  "No need."

Eve turned her back to him and took a few steps down the path.  She looked over her shoulder, but Lucifer was no longer standing by the tree.  He had gone back to wherever it was angels came from.  _Mother will know… Mother will know where angels come from…_ She just wondered if she was going to get a chance before Elohim did whatever they were going to do about her transgression.

_[A/N:_

_[Elohim, as the god of the Bible was originally called, is a plural term.  The original Jews were henotheists, not monotheists, which is why I've chosen to include a Father and a Mother in my version of the story._

_[Next time… Adam's choice.]_


	2. Wish me luck in my endeavor

_"Kiss goodbye to me,_

_Wish me luck in my endeavor_

_Dog will keep you company_

_And you'll stay here forever"_

_~~Children of __Eden___

~~*~~

Adam had been sitting with the dog.  Adam liked sitting with the dog.  It was a plain creature, half as tall as Adam, not nearly as broad, four-legged and brown-furred.  A simple creature.  Adam liked simple creatures.  Eve had always been attracted to the flashy, the colorful, the complicated.  She liked peacocks and butterflies and leopards and gryphons and platypuses.  Platypuses, honestly.  Adam wasn't quite sure what Father had been thinking when he made that one.

Adam liked the dog.  He wasn't exactly pretty, but he had a simple sort of charm.  Adam liked things like that.  Things he understood, things he didn't feel compelled to question.  The dogs looked up at him with big chocolate brown eyes, and Adam knew he had the dog's loyalty and affection.  Nothing was going to change that.

Eve liked the cat.  Adam didn't exactly understand this.  The cat was pretty enough, but sometimes it acted like Eve's friend and sometimes it didn't.  Sometimes it would listen to Eve, and sometimes it would run off to do as it pleased.  Even more perplexing was that Eve didn't seem to mind.  Eve would just laugh and say that if the cat could be controlled, she wouldn't like the cat as much.  Adam didn't quite grasp this concept, either.

Adam was patting the dog's head when Eve came down the path.  She was doing something new.  She was… making music.  Adam stood up, startled.  He'd never heard Eve make music before.  He had heard music -- Mother and some of her attendants played music.  But Eve had never made music.

She was humming.  Somewhere between Lucifer and Adam, Eve had discovered that she could hum.  On the periphery of her consciousness was the fact that she could sing, too, but she hadn't yet worked up the nerve to make that step.  But she flounced along the path, humming an aimless tune and skipping a little bit.  She'd finished her fruit and tossed the pit into the forest, vaguely aware that the seeds would make a new tree.  _Will it be another Tree of Knowledge?_ she wondered.  _Or will it just be a normal fruit tree?  Maybe the seeds of the Tree of Knowledge make something littler than the Tree of Knowledge… the Bush of Theories?  The Shrubbery of Supposition?_  Eve giggled girlishly.  All these new thoughts were occurring to her, and while it was overwhelming, it was also heady and exciting.

"Eve?" Adam said apprehensively.  "Something's… different."

The tremor in his voice shook her from her merry attitude.  She looked down at the fruit clutched in her right hand and remembered what she had to do.  "Adam… I think… I think I'm going away," she said at last.  Adam blinked at her, making her wince.  _Those eyes…_ she thought.  _Big and blue… so clear, so innocent… did mine look like that before?_  

"What do you mean, you're going away?" he asked.  The dog was head-butting his leg, wanting to be petted again.

"I mean… I mean I think I've found a way through that wall of trees.  I'm going to go see what's on the other side."

"But—"

Eve didn't let him get any further.  "Now, you've got the choice to come with me if you want to, but I don't really think you do," she said quickly.  "You… you like it here.  And not that I don't!  But I want to see what else there is… what's on the other side…"  Her gaze drifted away, over the tops of the trees, where the garden stopped but the cerulean blue sky continued.  "I've _got_ to see what's out there."

"Will you be back?" Adam asked plainly.

She turned her eyes back to meet his.  For the second time in all existence, they were welling with tears.  "I… I don't know," she replied.  "I honestly… just… don't know."

Adam was starting to panic.  _Eve can't be leaving.  That's… not right.  It just isn't.  That's not the way things work.  "But… but you can't leave.  Then there would only be one of us.  There are… there are supposed to be two."  Adam couldn't say how he knew this, but every particle of his being affirmed the statement._

"I'm sure Elohim will make you another sister," Eve said consolingly.

"But I don't want another sister.  I want you to be my sister."  There was a trace of desperation in his guileless voice now.

"I… I can't be, Adam."

He blinked at her.  The dog whined.  "I don't understand."

Eve tugged on one of her dark curls, thankful that it hung over her body before realizing that Adam wouldn't realize anything was wrong.  "Well… you said it, didn't you?  Something's different.  And it's different enough that… that I can't be your sister anymore."

She dared to glance up at him, only to wish she hadn't.  He was staring at her, disbelieving, and Eve thought he would have been crying if he'd known how.  His arms hung limp at his side.  _Strong arms,_ she thought, and wondered why she hadn't noticed before.  A brief comparison of their bodies flashed through Eve's mind.  He was built for strength; she for softness.  Not that each wasn't capable of the other, but they had been constructed differently.  _I wonder if I will ever have the opportunity to ask Mother why…_  

At that moment, Eve felt something stir deep within her being, a strong desire she had never known before.  She knew that so long as Adam was innocent as she had once been, those feelings would be trouble.  "Adam, I have to go.  You can't understand why."  She felt a stinging at the back of her eyes, and then those tears were back.  _Will I be crying all the time now?_  She wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand.  "You can come with me if you want… if… if you eat this—"  She held out the fruit Lucifer had given her.  "Then you'll be like me."

"Then can I be your brother again?"

_No,_ her mind said, but Eve's mouth opted for more tact.  "You will be like me.  We can be close again."

Adam knew she was evading the question, but decided not to call her on it.  Tentatively, he reached out and took the proffered fruit from her hand.  "Wh-where did you get this?"

"You know," she said simply, gazing at him with blurred vision.

He gaped.  "Eve – you didn't!"

"No, I didn't.  The angel Lucifer plucked the fruit.  I only took it."

"That's just as bad."

"No!"  Eve felt the childish instinct to stamp her foot.  "No, it isn't bad!  I don't know why Father wanted us to think it was!  But it's good, Adam.  It's good to know what I know."

"You don't look happy," he stated, and Eve had to concede him that point.

"I didn't say it made me happy," she replied.  "I said it was good to know.  In knowing, there is happiness and unhappiness."

"We have happiness now.  Why trade it for—"

"Because there's so much more!"  The desperation was in her voice now as she pleaded with him, though she understood the folly of trying to make an innocent see reason.  _I might as well be speaking to the dog._  Eve sighed heavily.  "Oh, Adam, there's so much more happiness than what you know now.  You can't appreciate it all, and I can't describe it to you.  I can only promise that the great pleasure is _worth_ the pain."

Adam tore his gaze from Eve and looked at the fruit.  So simple a thing, to make the world so confusing.  "Wh-what do you want me to do?" he asked softly.

Eve started slightly.  "What do you mean?"

"Do you want me to eat the fruit or not?"

"I want…"  Eve had to stop.  _What_ do _I want?  Of course I want him to eat it, to be like me and come with me and be my partner and share the journey with me… but not if it will make him unhappy._  She bit her lower lip.  _I couldn't bear it if he was unhappy… better to face the world beyond the Garden alone than to share it with a miserable Adam…_  She stepped forward and cupped Adam's cheek in her hand.  "I want you to decide.  If you think it will make you happy to know what I know, then eat.  If you think your life is better spent here, then do not eat.  The choice is not mine."

So close to Adam, Eve could tell how much he was trembling.  _Choice,_ she considered, _is a terrifying thing.  I am glad to have it, but… but it is still frightening.  There is too much power in it…_

"Eve… I don't know…" he said at last.  "I can't… I can't…"  He was stumbling over words that were unfamiliar to him.  "I can't _choose_.  Not… not so quickly, at least… do you have to go now?"

Eve nodded.  "I'm afraid so.  If I don't…"

"What will happen?"

"I don't know.  But… but I know I have to go."

Adam felt the cold wetness of dog's nose against his leg.  "I don't want you to."

"That is my choice.  This—"  She touched the fruit with one long finger.  "This is yours."  Eve moved backwards from him, aware that tears were now spilling freely onto her face.  "I love you, Adam," she said.  The words had been spoken before, but never with such understanding and meaning.  "And the choice is yours."

A long few minutes of silence followed.  Adam was probably unaware of it, as they had always been unaware of the passing of time but for the rising and setting of the sun.  Eve, however, felt it keenly, felt the weight of each second pounding in her skull as she watched Adam, who was staring at the fruit.  She wondered if he could feel the tension in the air as she could, and supposed not.  To Eve, it seemed as though the very sinews of the universe were about to split, with so much weight balanced on this single moment.

After a small eternity, Adam looked up at Eve, clearly about to speak.  But at that precise moment, the sky darkened, and a crack of thunder disrupted the air.  Eve shrieked and threw herself against the nearest tree, wishing she could melt into it.  Adam stood frozen, the fruit still cradled in his palm, too stunned by the intrusion to move.

Elohim had come.

_[Authoress's Note:_

_[I'd like to thank everyone who has reviewed so far for being so kind.  Next time – what *will* Mother and Father say?]_


End file.
